Question

discusses customer intelligence as it relates to marketing health care services. What is customer intelligence? How should the health care manager use customer intelligence to strategically create patient experiences? Provide an example to support your response.

Answer 1

Customer intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering and analyzing information regarding customers, and their details and activities, to build more effective customer relationships and improve decision-making by vendors.

Having new patients is a continuing challenge for doctors and healthcare providers, but perhaps the greater challenge—with longer-term rewards—is the ongoing effort to build trust and loyalty with existing patients.

In developing customer loyalty is the current market situation. Competition and quality of other products is significant for customer switches. Give a good reason to your customers to support you. Inertia loyalty is a prominent factor of customer satisfaction. For example, if you have a savings account with one bank for more than 5 years, you will not like to change a new bank as it is time consuming.

Differences in age, gender, culture, etc. are main determinants of customer loyalty. Educated customers do not commit to specific brands. Less affluent customers may not try a brand which does not suit them. Moreover, younger customers are not as brand conscious like the older ones.

When a patient has a good experience, he/she is going to talk about it. That means more word-of-mouth referrals,so more patients and a bigger impact on the community.

Patients want more personal experiences—that means they want to feel heard and seen as individuals, and they want to engage with other individuals on a personal level when discussing their problems. This is hard to accomplish, especially for large organizations with lots of staff members and countless appointments per day. However, it’s an ideal to strive for, and can make a positive difference in at least a portion of your patients’ lives. Look your patients in the eyes when talking to them, listen to what they have to say, and make sure everyone on your staff knows about the importance of these personal touches.

Developments in technology have depersonalized some elements of healthcare, and will likely continue to do so, but the most successful healthcare organizations of the future will be the ones that still prioritize the human patient experience.